Best hard floor cleaners 2023: Keep your floors clean the easy way

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Hard floors look great but they can be time consuming to keep in the best shape. Well, unless you buy one of our recommended hard floor cleaners.

All of these models are built to take care of hard floors, with dedicated cleaning heads and detergent formulated to clean up dirt and leave a streak-free finish.

Here, I’ve selected the top four cleaners, with both plug-in and battery-powered models. I’ve chosen a selection of cleaners, too, including polishers, vacuums and roller systems, so that you can find the right type for your home.

Every product has been fully tested in our lab, so you can trust that I’ve recommended only the best products.

We put all of our cleaners through a standard set of tests, so that we can compare and contrast the performance of them. We use real-world testing with real dirt, so that we can accurately depict the kind of performance you can expect in real life.You can find out more in our how we test hard floor cleaners guide.

An upgrade on the original, the Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 boosts power, ease of use and edge performance while maintaining many features that made the original so good.

As with the first product, the Glide 2 is part of the ONEPWR range of devices, which includes vacuum cleaners, spot cleaners and more. This model ships with a 4Ah battery, but you can use any ONEPWR battery from other products. If you’ve got other products, that’s handy, as you can boost runtime here by reusing your existing batteries.

We measured battery life at 21m 13s in our tests, which was enough to clean our 25m² kitchen and wiz around the rest of our downstairs. How many hard floors you have and how dirty they are will affect your cleaning range.

This cleaner has a 1-litre clean water tank, which combines water and cleaning solution; there’s a 0.75-litre dirty water tank, where everything sucked up from the floor ends up. Typically, this means emptying the dirty tank a couple of times for a full tank.

Emptying is easy, and there’s a separator inside that removes solids from the waste. While the Glide 2 can be used as a complete vacuum cleaner and mop at the same time, we find it’s often easier to vacuum bigger mess first, particularly with pets: as with all hard floor cleaners, sorting out wet pet hair isn’t fun.

Cleaning performance is excellent. Once turned on, the Glide 2 is in suction-only mode, with a trigger to dispense cleaning solution. We like machines that auto-dose, but the advantage here is that it’s easy to saturate tough stains with the cleaning solution.

Trying the Glide 2 on a variety of messes, it blasted through everything, removing mud, dried-on BBQ sauce and picking up bigger chunks of debris right to the edge of the room. And it left our floors virtually dry, safe to walk on just a few minutes after we had finished cleaning.Reviewer: David LudlowFull review: Vax ONEPWR Glide 2 review

For tough stains and the best performance, the Karcher FC 5 Hard Floor Cleaner is hard to beat. This plug-in model automatically dispenses cleaning detergent onto the two microfibre rollers beneath the machine. These spin at high speed, buffing out stains and almost pulling you along with the rolling action.As well as cleaning quickly, and even coping with tough, ground-in dirt, the FC 5 has a vacuum action that sucks up dirty water from the floor and puts it into a tank at the back of the machine. The result is that you don’t just get a visibly clean floor, but that you physically remove dirt and bacteria from the floor.This machine has a variety of cleaning fluids available, although you can use it with most floor cleaners – and it’s safe to use on sealed wood floors, too. Once done, the rollers can be easily removed and put through the washing machine, prepping them for the next time you need the cleaner.A touch heavy in the hand, the FC5 Hard Floor Cleaner is a great tool for any house with a lot of hard flooring, particularly those homes with mixed hard floor surfaces.Reviewer: Richard & Jackie StevensonFull review: Karcher FC 5 Hard Floor Cleaner review

If you want a lightweight, cordless cleaner that uses detergent, there are few better than the Karcher EWM 2. This model (previously known as the FC3), is a smaller, lighter version of the Karcher FC5. The basic principle is the same: a detergent tank drips onto the powerful rollers that clean, and dirt is sucked up into the small tank, removing mess from the floor.

This model isn’t quite as powerful, but it’s a little easier to push around as a result. The convenience of battery power also makes this cleaner a little easier to grab and use when you need it. Battery life is 20 minutes, which is enough to deep clean larger room or tackle a regular floor of your house; you’ll need multiple charges if you’ve got a large home and lots of hard floor.

Cleaning performance is excellent with the dual microfibre rollers dealing with all of our stains, even the tough ones. Just empty the used tank regularly to prevent mess being left behind, and watch out for the front of the rollers, as they can leave dirt on a wall if you’re not careful.

That aside, if you want something small and convenient, using detergent to really clean, this grab and go model is easy to use and powerful.Reviewer: David Ludlow Full review: Karcher EWM 2 review

As good as many steam cleaners are for tackling your hard floors, they can all take a bit of manual work to scrub up. Not so with the Shark Steam & Scrub Automatic Steam Mop S6002UK, which uses two spinning microfibre cloths to do the hard work for you.

Pumping steam out automatically via the two settings (High for tiles and other hard surfaces, Low for wood and laminate), this mop steams and scrubs at the same time.

All you have to do is glide it effortlessly across the floor and it will do the hard work for you. Even tougher stains are dealt with, and I just had to leave the mop over the mess, letting its mop cloths do the work for me.

There’s one minor complaint: the round cloths can’t get into corners, so you’ll need to do a bit of finishing off yourself at the end. Still, for minimum effort and detergent-free cleaning, this mop is hard to beat.

Reviewer: David LudlowFull review: Shark Steam & Scrub Automatic Steam Mop S6002UK review

If you’re looking for a simple-to-use hard floor cleaner that can replace an existing mop, the AirCraft PowerGlide could be for you. This battery-powered model lasts for 30 to 40 minutes per charge, but you can buy additional batteries to extend run-time.This model uses two large spinning microfibre cloths that buff and remove dirt. To aid with this, you can spray the floor in front of you with detergent from the integrated tank (this accepts any regular floor cleaner). Just be careful how much detergent you spray; this model doesn’t have any suction capability to pick up dirty water from the floor.In addition to cleaning, the PowerGlide can also be filled with liquid wax. You can then use the polishing cloths to give your hard floors a final protecting buff after cleaning. If you have special floors that need protecting, then the PowerGlide is a top choice.Reviewer: David LudlowFull review: AirCraft PowerGlide review

If you’re after the ultimate flexibility and also want to tackle the occasional rug, the Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max is the model for you. This revamped cordless model has a 30-minute run time, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the thick rollers and powerful suction mean that you can get over a lot of hard floors.And, this cleaner is also certified for use on rugs and carpet that can be wet washed. You don’t get the full cleaning ability that a carpet cleaner gives you, but for regular maintenance, this model does a great job.Hard floors are where this cleaner excels, dealing with stubborn stains with ease, leaving a nice shiny floor at the end. Impressively, the CrossWave Cordless Max is also a decent vacuum cleaner in its own right, so there’s no need to clean up with a vacuum cleaner first; in fact, the only thing you’ll need a regular vacuum cleaner for is to get into tight gaps and for edge cleaning.Simple controls on top let you select the mode (carpet or hard floor), and there’s a trigger to push out cleaning detergent when you want to use it, letting you control the amount of fluid: more for tough stains and less where the floor isn’t so dirty. When you finish, there’s a self-clean mode, so there’s not much cleaning up.Sure, this model is quite expensive, but if you want the flexibility of a cordless device without having to sacrifice power, this is a great choice.Reviewer: David LudlowFull review: Bissell CrossWave Cordless Max review

If it’s a properly affordable steam mop you’re after, the Beldray Detergent Steam Cleaner should be a fantastic choice.

It comes in a turquoise and white colour scheme and is a mop that’s both sturdy and easy to work with. This Beldray candidate can also stand up on its own and be easily diassembled as the mop’s metallic handle can be removed at the touch of a button. In addition, we also found this mop to be easy to move around thanks to the fact it’s both lightweight and comes with a 5m cable.

The 330ml water tank offers a decent amount to work with, and since it’s used sparingly, we were able to cover a good amount of ground before needing to refill it. As for other elements besides the water tank, this Beldray mop also comes with a plastic protected on off switch; there aren’t any other controls, but the fact it can be turned on and off from the device is a win over other options where you physically need to turn it off at the wall. Returning back to the water tank for a moment, it’s pretty speedy to heat up – Beldray says it’ll take 25 seconds to heat. As well as also being a steam mop, as the name of the cleaner suggests, it is also possible to freshen up floors some more with the addition of a 200ml detergent tank. This appliance also comes with a Velcro-attached microfibre pad for the mop head, and a carpet glider for helping it to move smoothly across carpeted surfaces.

In testing, the Beldray Detergent Steam Cleaner did a decent job of getting rid of most of the messes we’d left on both smooth and textured tiles in one go. When taking these tests individually, in steaming a patch of rug for 30 seconds, there was a saturation in the colours of the rug after the 30 seconds, although the mop hadn’t quite got rid of a small stain the rug. When removing dried muddy footprints from a laminate floor though, the mop fully removed them in 20 second without any marks or residue, while in our toughest test (a combo of coffee and tomato paste dried into a patch of tiles), it took around 2 and a half minutes for the stain to be fully removed, although only 30 seconds to remove the superficial staining.

Reviewer: Helen Harjak

Full review: Beldray Detergent Steam Cleaner review

Coping with wet and dry messes, as well as self-cleaning, the powerful Roborock Dyad is both a vacuum cleaner and a hard floor cleaner.

It has two tanks: a 850ml clean water tank, which can also take suitable machine detergent for extra cleaning power, and a 620ml dirty water tank, into which all the dirt is sucked. The cleaner will tell you when the dirty water tank is full. There’s also a filter for any solid mess.

The controls on the handle include a power toggle button plus a button to change modes. You can get a visual indicator of the level of dirt by looking at the coloured bar that runs around the LCD: the more red there is, the dirtier the floor.

Pushing the Dyad around is easy, with the smooth joint on the head making it quick to zip around chairs. And when you’ve finished, you simply tap the button on top to run the automatic cleaning process, which delivers clean water over the rollers and works brilliantly.

In our tests the Dyad performed superbly, cleaning up loose debris and tougher stains and bringing hard floors back to their best. And with battery life of up to 35 minutes, this floor cleaner should be able to cope with large areas without needing to be recharged.

Full review: Roborock Dyad

Reviewer: David Ludlow

First things first: this is a super-expensive robot vacuum cleaner and mop. So, what’s it doing on this list? Quite simply, it’s the best automated mop that we have reviewed before. While most robot vacuum cleaners that can mop usually just drip water onto a microfibre cloth, the X1 Omni is different.

This model has dual spinning microfibre cloths that actually agitate and remove dirt. It does almost as a good a job at cleaning as a manual steam mop or floor cleaner, only with no actual effort. Used in a well-used kitchen, we found that we only needed to get out a manual floor cleaner every couple of weeks or so, and that was mostly to get right into the edges where the robot can’t reach.

Thanks to its large docking station, the X1 Omni can automatically clean its mopping pads, ditching the dirty water into a large tank, and then it dries itself and takes on a fresh supply of water for the next run. Oh, and it will automatically empty its bin, too, so there’s very little to do.

Vacuuming performance is just as impressive. There are a few minor complains: the software isn’t quite as flexible as some of the competition, and if you have carpets it can be fiddly working out how to clean them without getting them wet. We’d also avoid using the integrated voice assistant, as it’s hard to get it to understand.

If you’ve mostly got hard floors and want them looked after automatically, then this is an exceptional robot vacuum cleaner and mop.

Full review: Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni review

Reviewer: David Ludlow

A versatile and useful steam cleaner for many jobs

A powerful cordless vacuum cleaner and automated mop

We’ve reviewed

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Steam Cleaner

There are three main types of hard floor cleaner: those with rollers, those with spinning microfibre pads, and steam cleaners. Roller cleaners generally have both dirty water and clean water tanks, sucking up dirt and germs to remove all traces from the floor, leaving your floor almost dry once cleaning is complete. These are a brilliant choice if you have large areas of hard floor in your home.Cleaners that use microfibre cloths are typically more gentle than roller cleaners, gently buffing the floor clean. These models are good if you have fewer hard floors to worry about. Also, look for a model that can apply a liquid wax finish to protect your floors after cleaning, particularly if you have expensive and delicate, solid timber floors.Steam cleaners can disinfect floors with heat, but the high temperatures make them better suited to tiled or laminate floors.

Most hard floor cleaners can be used with a detergent, but it’s important to match the type of detergent to the surface you’re cleaning. For example, if you have oiled floors, ensure you use a detergent that’s safe to use on such floors; otherwise, you could cause damage. You can use the manufacturer’s own detergent, although standard floor cleaner would work just as well in most instances. Just follow the instructions to ensure you’re using the correct amount.

Corded cleaners are likely to be more powerful. As such, if your house is predominantly hard floors, then a plug-in cleaner will probably suit you best. If you have fewer hard floors, then the convenience of a cordless cleaner shouldn’t be overlooked.

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.